


Nor Flesh Nor Fowl

by Quillori



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori





	Nor Flesh Nor Fowl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sister Coyote (sister_coyote)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/gifts).



 

 

"That was good work you did there."

The farmer was not a man much given to praise, or even to conversation, but there was something about this one man that always left him obscurely wanting things just beyond his reach, a connection to something he couldn't quite name. Even hiring the man had been unaccountable, a step away from the normal sense with the farmer managed his daily life. Charity was all very well, and to take in the youngest son of a large family was one thing, providently combining duty to his fellows with the convenience of extra labour. To take in a cripple was something else again, and he could hardly have known at the time that the youth, as he then was, could with only one good arm supply the work of two. Still, he had done it, and it had worked out for the best. 

Now the man looked uncomfortable in his skin and restless, the way he did every year when the seasons changed and set an ache in the deformed bones that should have been his arm.

"I can have the wife make you a hot poultice, if that would help."

"It doesn't hurt, it just ... it just feels better if I move it."

"A poultice is good for cramps."

"It isn't really cramped. There isn't any pain, there's nothing wrong, it just doesn't feel right either."

"I'm sorry. I wish we could do something for you."

There didn't seem anything more to say, so the two men sat in silence by the shore of the lake, watching the sky begin to grow dark. After a while, the farmer spoke again.

"I see gypsies are passing through. Lucky I don't have a daughter to worry about. Did you hear a girl two villages over ran off with them last summer? Everyone was out searching, but they'd gone in the night."

"I wonder if she'll be happy?"

It was a strange question, but the man always did look at things oddly, like they didn't quite mean to him what they did to everyone else. The farmer had never really thought about happiness. You wanted a girl and you married her, or she chose someone else and you had to keep looking. You wanted your crops to do well, to have a house and children and enough to eat and good clothes for church, and you got those things or you didn't. Obviously it was better if you got them, and those for whom things went most wrong could end up wretched, but mostly you went on from day to day, doing what needed to be done, and not thinking whether you were going to be happy. The very idea seemed incongruous, like something from a story that didn't actually apply to real life. He had no idea what it would mean for a farm girl to be happy with a gypsy husband.

"It's hard if people want different things, or they have different ideas of what's proper and normal."

It was unusual for the man to want to talk, and the farmer was pleased to have come up with a topic that interested him. It cast a faint glamour over what was, after all, a quite normal concern. He might have spoken about the weather, or the crops, or taxes, all topics that were in general currency; instead he had happened on the gypsies, and he was unexpectedly rewarded by having the subject returned to him at an angle, transformed into weird, tangential observations that didn't quite fit the world he knew. 

"My own mother, I wouldn't say she was unhappy, but she liked to live here, where she was born, and do things in the customary way. She thought anything too different might be dangerous; you start wandering off and asking questions and who knows what might happen?"

"Well, your mother was a sensible woman. Things are done the way they are because it's a good way, tried and tested. We were all worried about her when she married a stranger, but everyone is bit wild when they're young. You can see that she made sure you had a proper home, and now that she lives in a fine house in the village and has so many grandchildren everything is just as it should be."

"I suppose it is. We took after our father, I think, all of us except my sister: she was like my mother."

"Yes, I remember. You were all such wild boys, always running off and getting into scrapes. Everyone was sure some of you would go bad when you got older. We should have trusted your mother; she could always bring you in line. Look at your brothers, they're are all respected men now, hard workers with good wives and children of their own."

When it seemed that no reply would be forthcoming, the farmer cast around for something else to say.

"The swans will be going soon. You can see them getting ready to fly away."

And then, because the other man put him in mind of things he wouldn't normally bother considering, he added, "I wonder where they go?"

"People say they fly beyond the mountains to live in jewelled palaces. There are gardens with fountains and dances every night and it is always summer."

"People say that, do they? In that case it's a shame we can't go there too."

"Perhaps people are lying. People do that."

Silence fell again and the farmer sat thinking about how a jewelled palace might look and what it would be like to have endless summer. He realised that he had never seen a fountain. The nearest he could come was the village spring, which was hardly the same thing. Eventually his pleasant reverie was interrupted:

"We had fun in those days. Everything was such an adventure and we used to explore further and further from home. Have you ever climbed those hills over the lake? There's a lovely view from there, everything spread out below you like a map. We all wanted to go even further, go to the city or become sailors or traders: anything to see what was over the horizon. But it was so difficult. Talking like that made mother cry. She wanted us here where she could see us every day and know we were alright. I don't think she wanted to make us unhappy, she just didn't want to be unhappy herself. She thought us doing things that made her happy for us must be the same as us doing things that would make us happy. And then there was Sis. We were all poor in those days and she worked so hard, she deserved to have a good husband. And even if she would make a wife any man could be proud of, who'd want to marry her if all her brothers were so ... unsatisfactory? Mother told us again and again she would find nice girls for us, that we should think of her and marry and settle down. And Sis sat in the corner, working her fingers to the bone sewing for us and never saying a word."

They sat on together by the lake until it was almost dark. Finally the farmer got up and said they should be heading home.

"I'll follow you in minute. I want to walk around a bit, stretch my muscles."

The farmer had already turned to walk away when the other man added, "I always hated her sewing, you know. All those shirts, like so many nets." But there didn't seem to be anything the farmer could say to that, so he said nothing.

The man stood alone on the shore of the lake, watching the swans getting ready to migrate and beating his one useless wing against the air. 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Feathers and Nettles (The Sibling Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4171071) by [La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire)




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